Tag Archives: war horse

Last spring, I saw the National Theatre’s War Horse at Lincoln Center, shortly after it was awarded a Tony award. While the production was absolutely impressive, in terms of the technical savvy of the performers and techs, in the end the puppetry didn’t strike me as necessary to the dramatic action of the production; at times, it felt like it separated me from the characters’ experiences.

I saw both the National Theatre’s War Horse (5 Tonys in 2011, including Best Play) and Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More last week. The two shows share a common thread in that they ask their audiences to become involved in an area of performance they may not have experienced to the same degree before. War Horse’s puppetry is of a scale that few American audiences will have seen, while Sleep No More immerses its audience from the word go. This is what real virtual reality feels like, people.